It would. Because some guy, maybe named permachine would be like "That would be stupid to DDOS now, no one will see the news because of the olympics... It must be a real DDOS attack!" But in reality it's just what they want you to think. CONSPIRACY.

There is a theory that the DDoS attack is an attempt to prevent the dissemination of some sensitive Stratfor files that are either recently released or due to be released (I'm not sure which). Nyud.net does not mirror the actual leaks, but references Wikileaks.org for that content. Thus it was useless in trying to verify the theory.

The truth will eventually emerge since they can't DDoS the site forever and it will be interesting to discover what this was all about.

Edit: Twitter is abuzz with the news that documentation of the Trapwire domestic surveillance program was recently released. This could explain the DDoS attack.

Another Edit: Wikileaks-press.org is back up and the Trapwire information is more extensive than I indicated above. Trapwire is both a domestic and international surveillance network and the recently published Stratfor emails disclose information discovered through its use.

They aren't down, just slow due to the fact it's a mirror and probably also inundated with people with news of the DDOS. I tried the first 5 on the .info page and they all worked. Took about 30 seconds to load but they're not down.

It stops a lot of people from being able to get the information, which is exactly impeding WL's functioning. The word has not spread like wildfire in this situation AFAIK because I can't view wikileaks and no one in this thread has pointed out a way to do so.

This news article was on Reddit 9 hours ago, the first comment on that article was posted 9 hours ago... Wikileaks didn't spread that news but here we are discussing it.

Wikileaks is a movement, not a website. Shut the website down, it can still get the word out. So what if you or I can't access it right now or check BNP membership lists... if something big happened right now, would we really not know? We would, the website is just one method of release, there are many many more.

Jumping the gun? Wikileaks has been a force on the geopolitical scene for years now. They have never done anything that really stung the US or Israel, and yet they've now received information from everyone and their grandpa.

I don't know what your standard for "really" is, but Collateral Murder and Clinton's UN DNA espionage are two things off the top off my head that stung the US enough to provoke earnest death threats from all classes of society.

It might sting the pride of the American people, maybe shake the beliefs of some who thought we were infallible in terms of foreign policy. But in terms of political consequences there are only those for the sovereignty of states opposed to global empire.

There is actually little love lost between most of Anonymous and Wikileaks. Wikileaks used to tout that it was all about freedom of information, and in its early days even posted people's personal information (because you know, getting death threats at home is fun). This was great, a site where Anons could dox people and not get banned! Some Anons decided that they wanted to test just how open with information Assange would be. So a couple of years back (back before the site even received media attention), they post his personal information everywhere they can. Assange throws a shit fit, and sends out C&D letters to all the sites. He posts on a blog (or the front page of wikileaks, I can't recall which it was) that the people that did this crossed the line, blah blah blah...

That was the day that Anonymous learned wikileaks was run by a hypocritical douche-bag.

The years go by, most of the old Anons have moved on, grown up ect. Now there are new Anons who think Assange is some kind of tragic hero. For a group of people that is supposed to never forget...Anonymous sure don't remember some important shit.

Awaiting evidence too but here are some facts which may help show that the sauce does indeed exist:
* Assange's reaction when his autobiography was published after he changed his mind about publishing it.
* That wikileaks verify and censor information before publishing it (if it's checked and cut, how do we know it's contextually correct?)
* Assange's refusal to be open and transparent and face the charges against him made in Sweden, using vast sums of donors money in the process. (No he can't be extradited to the US as he has broken no US law and the US have made no official complaint against him, so shut up! Conspiracy theories are just that, it doesn't make it fact!) - If I was wrongfully accused of rape under whatever law, I would go out of my way to prove my innocence (despite onus of proof). If on the other hand I was guilty, I would go out of my way to avoid trial...

If I was wrongfully accused of rape under whatever law, I would go out of my way to prove my innocence (despite onus of proof). If on the other hand I was guilty, I would go out of my way to avoid trial...

Bradley Manning's lawyers have asked for the evidence against their client to be presented in court, and prosecutors said they cannot show the court the evidence, because national security. The mere attempt to prosecute and not provide proof of wrong-doing, and the subsequent lack of cooperation in the prosecution providing the evidence to the defense as per court order, instead of appealing the court order to provide the evidence of a crime...

On a mostly unrelated note, Kim Dotcom's warrants have been ruled invalid, FBI siezed his servers and took them offline, then coordinated with local police to aid his home with helicopters and assault rifles, but no body armor. Police testified they did not wear personal protection because they did not perceive any threat...so why the assault rifles?

Gitmo has not been closed down, several Americans have already won lawsuits after being detained years in Gitmo without trial or evidence of wrong-doing, so I think if you were Assange and were the head of the journalism company that printed Cablegate, you would worry about a year in solitary confinement without charges (a la Manning) or getting stormed by helicopters and assault riffles just waiting to put a 5.56mm round in you now and worry about justifying it later.

He already answered questions about the "rape" case, the plaintiff dropped the charges and admitted lying to the police, and now he is wanted for questioning about the same matter. Okay, question him over the phone; if you just want to ask him official statements, you can travel to his location; he was on house arrest, so go to his home and ask him. it is clear that the intention is to gain custody of his person for any possible reason, then put him in a dark hole forever for the embarrassment he caused the criminal ruling parties.

Not everybody who is innocent wants to go to trial (hence, innocent people try to avoid trial) and not everybody who is guilty tries to avoid trial; if they desire publicity a la serial killers, etc or celebrities, or if they are tired of being under investigation or genuinely desire justice for their crimes.

He is not wanted for rape, Fox News listener. He had sex, the condom broke, he let the girl know, she consented, they continued to have sex, she was fine for a few days, she saw him in public with another woman who he had sex with more recently, and then the first of these two women pressed charges for sex without a condemn without consent to have sex without a condemn, which is not a crime in the USA. The USA is not going to let a little thing like ex post facto law stop them from putting a person like Bradley Manning (Assange's source) in solitary confinement for over a year, 23 hours of no light or human contact, and interrogation methods that are, at the least, secret. If it were your life you were risking, and you were a journalist who had your source tortured for a year for even talking to you, and they were interrogated extensively about you, you might avoid trial, too.

First off, I am British and do not have Fox news. I use the word 'rape' as sexually forcing yourself upon a sleeping woman is rape whether a stranger, or your own wife! At the moment 'allegedly' of course.

The story you cite came from where? As it has not been to court with evidence analysed, we have no reasonable grounds to believe any single side.

Bradley Manning was a US soldier. He was in solitary confinement for LESS than a year not 'more than' which you suggest. I also cannot find any evidence about him being forced to live in darkness for 23 hours per day. Bradley Manning was given great responsibility with sensitive US data and he allegedly abused that power. He has proven his lack of trustworthiness and maybe the US are trying to find out what other information he has given out? Nuke Launch codes? Yes I'd detain him if I could for that. He has allegedly put US national security at huge risk.

Assange conversely is just a journalist, a normal person. He isn't a US citizen, any 'crimes' he committed in relation to wikileaks were not committed on US soil and so the US cannot get involved. He did what any journalist would do. What if Manning went to a Tabloid? I'd assume the same outcome.

Assange in my mind is using and abusing his powers of conspiracy theorising to gain support to avoid facing complaints of alleged crimes he committed in Sweden where under Swedish law he allegedly broke the law.

There are many versions of the one case you mention, but what of the other. Some claim he raped the woman in her sleep? If this went to court, we could see the evidence and hear the stories, but without that we have nothing but biassed reporting from all sides.

I use the word 'alleged' a lot you'll notice. As Assange is doing all he can to avoid facing the charges we may never know. I don't care if I'd spend a year in prison, I would spend a year in darkness than to have half the world branding me as a rapist while I spend fortunes trying to hide from the law...

All that aside, the USA would have to provide a complaint against Assange with the UK OR Sweden to be granted an extradition... If he has broken no US law, which it seems he hasn't. Sweden will not extradite him to the US, just like the UK won't...

It's a bollocks story fabricated to prevent a boy who refuses to be a man and face up to the consequences... He would rather scurry like a mouse than fight like a tiger... what a man...

Bradley Manning leaked a hidden pentagon video of Reuter's reporters being killed by an Apache helicopter that mistook their cameras for rocket launchers, and killed 11 civilians because, well, it is an Apache helicopter, not a sniper rifle. I don't fault the pilots, most people would have made the same choice; you don't wait to be fired upon to think, gee, thought that rocket launder was just a video camera. However, the pentagon fished out the US bullets from the bodies, lied to the victims families and said insurgents bullets killed them, and hid the tape. this was long before the log of Iraq civilian and military death records was released.

The prosecution has yet to prove one single human has ever been harmed by Bradley Manning's leaks; it is hard to say he put the lives of anybody at risk, when the prosecution has not named one single individual at risk or harmed.

However, cablegate without a doubt was the single biggest cause of the Arab spring. Certainly the Arabs were upset with their rulers, but the US has been upset with their rulers for over one hundred years and aside from a few civil rights riots in the 60's that did not lead to many representatives losing their freedom or lives, really, there hasn't been any consequence. However, the puppet dictators who swear they hate Isreal had actually been secretly supplying Isreal with economic prosperity, and there were other lies and hypocrisy exposed, and when the people revolted, the government in the Arab world did exactly what the government in the US would do; use military force to slaughter civilians who want accountability from their government.

The treason in the USA is not from Bradley Manning, and generals have already said that their troops were never placed in harm from anything bradley manning did; however, going to war under false pretense, and lying the to UN security council about anthrax, have placed their troops in unnecessary danger- ie war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange is protected by freedom of the press, and what he did cannot be illegal, because it was not on US soil and he is not a US citizen, right? Then why have US politicians demanded he be killed as a terrorists? 1 , 2 , 3 just a brief google of "assassinate assange" without digging for which members. Should we discuss the way Osama was treated? Throwing a dead body overboard into an ocean is not exactly the prudent way to treat a body that people would want DNA testing on, in the event that, you know, the government was lying.

Donations to wikileaks were cut off by visa, mastercard, paypal, and other sources. There was no due process of law. You are asking that he "tiger up" instead of scurry like a mouse, but there has been overwhelming injustice and disregard for the legal process, so since he is not brave enough to take on the US military for his beliefs, like, oh, say, Osama Bin Laden, then I praise Assange. Bin Laden bombed a navy ship and army barracks before 9-11, and when 9-11 happened, he was immediately accused. In fact, he was already in the top 5 FBI most wanted people in the world, I knew who he was, and I said it was him before the second tower was hit. He denied it was him, and everybody I know said, "he is afraid of what we will do to him if he admitted it was him." This has gone completely unnoticed and angered me more than the Anthrax vial Powell showed the UN. Since 9-11, bin Laden has often used 9-11 to unify cells under one umbrella, and give hope for victory to his cause (Bin Laden failed at attempts to blow up the same buildings on more than one occasion).

Bin Laden never said he was behind 9-11. Bin Laden's body was thrown into the ocean; why? I am not a conspiracy theorists, I just want accountability for mistakes or criminal activities. I don't have to be a conspiracy theorists to think Assange could end up assassinated if Sarah Palin, the governor of a US state and head of the Alaskan national guard, calls for his assassination. He could end up floating dead in the ocean before he ever gets to the US, and you think the right way to stand up to the US tyranny is to take them on, alone, in their courts, under their rules? No, get the world involved, let the world see the US is not the beacon of freedom they claim to be; either the US will have to admit it hates freedom, or it will have to hold tyrants accountable.

I am glad you would rather get prison guards shoving you in a cell with bubba, and if you tried to defend yourself from prisonrape, the guards shoved their batons up your colon and wrote a report about you fighting an inmate and then fighting the guards, but you are a small minority. prisonrape is a tactic police use in the USA to intimidate criminals into confessions so they don't have to go to court, and many cowards would rather confess to a crime they are innocent and do their time in regular lock-up or plea out to a misdemeanor than go through the torture, but so glad to hear you are a big man and can take torture for your values. You realize you sound like a lunatic fanatic, right? You sound like you would kill/die for your beliefs, but trying to enlist the world diplomats to make meaningful change in global leaders' behaviors is not interesting to you; just going commando and taking on a corrupt government alone like Rambo. You sound brash and immature, and your tactics are usually less successful at accomplishing change in the political landscape than Assange's.

good points mostly, but i wouldn't have done the same thing as the men in the helicopter because i am not the kind of monster who would voluntarily sign up for a job where i summarily and unaccountably rain death from the sky on human beings. i hope their lower bodies are shattered by an IED

Most of the people in the military did not sign up to kill civilians. they may have signed up for the college money, of they were jobless, or they thought it would get them the application points they needed for a government job like firefighter or police officer, jobs that often only go to military veterans. However, once in the military, they can be ordered to go to artillery training, or go to jail for disobeying an order. Once they have completed artillery training, they can be ordered to fire on a map coordinate, or go to jail. They have no idea they are firing on a pre-school, public library, university, shopping mall, etc., they are just told the GPS coordinates. Don't want to follow orders? No college money, no firefighter job back home, and go to jail. That is what "defending your country" has turned into. If you're an officer passing the orders down from the top, it is no different; you get ordered to bomb a school full of children, you pass the order down or go to jail, no job waiting for you after you get out of prison for disobeying orders. Oh, and the target, that is top secret, so if you leak it to the public, well, the military will neither confirm not deny it (nor will they be asked by any authorities) but the person leaking military information will be charged with treason.

Meanwhile, follow orders lock-step, get out of the military, go home, get a job or go to college. Get some awards for the children you killed. you didn't even have to see their faces, you were 20 miles away when you fired the artillery.

It is the exact same plan from Vietnam, and producing at least as many PTSD victims.

I never said what Manning did was wrong, all I'm saying was that it was illegal. The law is rarely right, but it is still the law.

RE Assassination:

Link 1:

Huckabee said: "Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty."

Clearly (although I don't have access to the full conversation) Huckabee thought it was a government official and made no call to any solder nor Assange.

Link 2:

Is the legal distraction from Assange's lawyer regarding the above statement despite not even being about Assange. (and it's careful not to quote the phrase ver batim)

Link 3:

Is Fox News... (see above): Bob Beckel a political commentator for Fox news says he should be illegally assassinated...

So the threat of assassination is from a Fox News guest because Huckabee's comment wasn't even about Assange and seems to me to be a throwaway comment rather than any real call to action. Manning has not been executed, why would Assange?

Visa et al. - of course they cut off payments, they have their reputation to think of and don't want to be associated with helping to fun questionably legal organisation. If Wikileaks did result in deaths, Paypal don't want blood on their hands. Any big business risk assessment would point to their decision, it doesn't prove anything about Assange's threat.

This isn't even related but I'll honour with a reply. Bin Laden also DID say he was behind the attacks, and called for further attacks very publicly. The bombers were all linked to Al Quaida with plenty of proof that the official story is true and none against. Any suggestion otherwise shows a complete lack of respect for the victims. Why was he buried at sea? Because he deserved little better and I feel that if his whereabouts were known it would very much create a shrine and focus point.

The only part I do agree with however is the comment about Freedom. If you want true freedom there are plenty of countries which allow it, but they are not pleasant places to live in. Bodies lining the streets of Mexico as drug cartels take over. Huge bars surrounding South African hotels to protect tourists from attack. Admittedly there is a line which is often pushed upon but we can't have it both ways. Brits have recoiled in horror when they found out that governments could potentially triangulate our exact whereabouts via mobile phone, some people refuse to cary a phone because of it. We hate that the government wants our phone records! But last month when a little girl phoned emergency services claiming her mother had fallen over unconscious and she was locked alone in the house but didn't know the address! It was the police's fault for not being able to trace the call back (thank you Hollywood)! But this is an entirely different debate and one I feel that no one can win.

shoving you in a cell with bubba

I though it was solitary confinement...

Back to the point in question. I don't see any threat for Assange, as we agree, he only published the data. Manning broke the law allegedly by giving it to him. Yes Wikileaks has shown some pretty shocking stuff, videos and cables (and many more) which is commendable. But it is still run by human beings and to suggest that a human being should be let off answering to a crime, especially that of rape just because he's done some good is a dangerous precedent to set. If they were my sister or daughter, I'd drag Assange kicking and screaming if necessary to get this answered once and for all. If innocent, Assange has everything to gain by going to court! Once the world see's he's innocent, donations will continue, associations reformed, Wikileaks will be able to continue unimpeded. A man of his power should settle the minds of his loyal supporters and stop running from the law at great expense to his donors.

The bombers were linked to Al Quaida? Really? They recovered the black boxes and have shown them to the public, under all that rubble they were able to find intact black boxes from the planes, or the cell phones used to record the non-twin towers exchanges were how you knew the terrorists were linked to Al Quaida? Interesting that post 9-11, the FAA didn't immediately decide to make sure no plane's navigation equipment or any other aircraft equipment could not be interfered with by cell phone signals, even though that seems like it should be a high priority, and the heros that prevented one plane from being hijacked used their phones to make calls while on board, and that is the only record of what happened, yet using a phone on a plane is the worst thing a person can do. No, a jumbo jet with hundreds of people had some saudi passengers who took the blame, whether or not they did anything, because when a WASP blows up the OKC federal building or when a WASP terrorises some sikh temple, it is hard to create a government agency larger than the CIA and FBI combined that has the authority of unwarranted wire taps and unprecedented invasion of privacy.

If Assange is guilty, he will have a legal team present for all questioning better than OJ Simpson. Such an interrogation could be done in person while he is in an embassy, or over the phone. If he admits to any crimes, or if there was already evidence of a crime, he would already have a legit warrant for his arrest instead of being wanted for questioning. He is just wanted for questioning, and about a case that he already answered questions about, and the case was already dropped, previously. This is an excuse to get Assange in custody.

If it was your sister, and somebody had consentual sex, and the next day slept with somebody else, you may be so angry as to want them arrested for rape or executed, but that has no bearing on the facts of the case.

This woman consented to sex after she knew the condom broke, and she admitted that to police after police questioned Assange, which caused the police to drop the case.

The laws about extradition have already been broken. Assange should never have been on house arrest, he should never have been accosted in the UK or Australia. What he did is not a crime in the USA, the UK, or Australia, only the country it happened, which I believe was Sweden.

If a person in the UK is wanted for breaking a law in any other nation, but that law does not exist in the UK, then the UK is not supposed to extradite. The USA has the same rules governing extradition.

The USA and UK and AUstralia have no extradition laws for witnesses to a crime, or people wanted for questioning about a crime. It is not lawful to "extradite" somebody so they can answer questions in another country about an event; there needs to be a new word for that, not extradition, maybe kidnapping?

If Assange is guilty, then Sweden can explain the evidence they have against him.

Where is the original charge? Why quote people's opinions reported in online newspapers? If the news is where you get your 'facts' from, then no wonder you believe the rest of the conspiracy theories. The allegation of the first woman is that he broke it deliberately. But what of the second charge? I notice you keep skirting around that one...

If a woman is raped, whether she had consensual sex before or after that event does not take away the potential seriousness of the crime.

If a man is charged with rape, he should answer those charges, lest he is no man. IMHO Assange is too chicken. He should stop flouting loopholes in the law and put an end to this once and for all. If he's innocent great, if not, justice needs to be done.

Oh no...your right to doubt this. The front page of wikileaks bitching about being doxed is gone. It was discussed years ago on /b/ and then later on ED, both of which are such pinnacles of journalistic integrity. I remember the images being pretty convincing, but Photoshop is always a possibility. Since ED was re-hosted in 2011, so all of its revision history is now gone (the page now only focuses on his latest escapades), and the images hosted there seem to have gone the way of the dodo.

Don't believe me if you don't want to, I know I wouldn't without any credible sources.

Why would a government DDoS anyone? I mean really, what does an expenditure like that accomplish? It's not like WL is a vital site for everyone every day. Literally NO ONE (save WL admins) are inconvenienced even a little by this. Honestly, governments have more nefarious things to do than prank a dinky little organization which proved all bark no bite a long time ago.

But they aren't "stopping the spread of info". They're DDoSing a sight on which the information is not proprietary in the first place. Nothing is being stopped. I still really don't get why a state entity would waste time doing this. Even if they wanted to "stop the spread of information", all their doing is briefly delaying and inconveniencing the spread of information. It just doesn't accomplish anything save exciting the internet goon squad to conspiracy theory.

Wiki leaks is the conduit for this information to be disseminated. Without it millions of people would not be exposed to whatever is being leaked.

It is fortunate that it was only a temporary inconvenience. It is also true that for a government or agency beyond the reach of law enforcement, performing an attack like this is not all that hard. So why not? Maybe they get lucky and the site goes down for a day or two.

Again, this accomplishes nothing. Nothing on that site is proprietary and, I hate to break it to you, but Wikileaks is not a frequent or important destination for any kind of majority of internet users anywhere. There is literally NO POINT to a government DDoSing a site, the information on which is all available on other sites, torrents, etc. They gain NOTHING.

You're right, I don't get the motive. Wikileaks is a decidedly different kind of operation from either Demonoid or Megaupload. The former publishes leaked information (most of which isn't very interesting or relevant), while the former facilitated piracy/sharing of copyrighted products. The former is a matter of security, while the latter is a matter of commerce. Your equivalency is not good. Also, you failed to explain what their motive might be or what they might hope to gain. Just telling me to believe you is not terribly convincing.

Like I said in the topic about that, while the timing's incredibly suspicious I don't see what they had to gain from a DDoS. They could just have taken the servers immediately and dealt with any killswitches that way instead of committing crimes for no obvious reason.

Maybe I don't know enough about DDoS attacks, but wouldn't it be fairly trivial to write a server-side script that compares the ip address of incoming pings with the number of times it has attempted to ping a second? So, before any server can go offline, it throttles those server requests and stops "delivering" or caches the request until the last one is made then delivers.

I'm not trying to be a dick or a troll or anything like that, just don't know enough about the nature of these attacks. I do own a website on a managed server account that serves app content, and I'd like to prepare myself - even if it's an accidental DDoS amount of traffic.

This will probably get buried but I have to know. Why does it seem that people want to protect this guy and his organization so much? He has admitted that he isn't releasing documents because he feels a journalistic need for the public to be aware of what our collective governments are doing or saying to each other. He does it because he likes to see people in power be torn down by stupid stuff they wrote in e-mails or to possibly breach national security because it will make a somewhat clandestine organization look bad. IMHO he is doing what he does to be a dick and I don't care what he releases to the public. If your motives are just to be an asshole to people of power and influence than you have no character, honor, or integrity and are therefor a non respectable douche

Everything that someone does has a motive behind it. And his motive is just to be a dick. And that just cheapens the information he releases. And it's not like he is sticking his neck out either. He has other people do his dirty work. And one is even going to be tried for treason. So I say fuck Julian Assange!

You may scoff at tor, but the latest attacks do not use a lot of bandwidth. They simply open a connection, drop it and immediately open a new one. Get a few hundred of those opening 30 connections a second and you'll run into the maximum open file limit pretty damn soon.

Hell, Doing basic security testing for a company, I DOSed their (testing,mind you)webserver with one desktop computer.

He's a grey hat, so I assume he's not overly malicious or anything. I'm not for or against him, but it is interested to watch him in (and follow) what he does. Plus he's got that whole... "Mystery" thing going on? I dunno, ha ha.

...I much prefer him to those LulzSec and TeaMp0isoN idiots; t3j35t3r seems to have some kind of purpose to his actions, anyway.

I personally disagreed with his diplomatic cable leaks. It's the realities of diplomacy. Sometimes your allies just act like dicks, but you can't call them out on it. So you say it in a memo for your own country. Nothing nefarious about it

Your both right. What your referring to is the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or the USS Maddox incident, these are the names given to two separate confrontations, one actual and one now recognized as intentionally fabricated.

The second Tonkin Gulf incident (the one which never happened) was originally claimed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to have occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle, but instead may have involved "Tonkin Ghosts" (false radar images) and not actual NVN torpedo boat attacks.

The outcome of these two incidents (the real one, which the US fired first in, BTW, and the second one, hot on the heels of the first in order to pressure a decision out of congress as quickly as possible) was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be "jeopardized" by "communist aggression".
The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that the Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese Naval vessels present during the incident of August 4. The report stated
and regarding August 4:

" It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2."
Below I have included a link for additional reading, should you wish to know more on the subject.
[8] http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/spartans/chapter5.pdf

"On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox, while performing a signals intelligence patrol as part of DESOTO operations, engaged three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron.[1] A sea battle resulted, in which the Maddox expended over two hundred eighty 3-inch and 5-inch shells, and in which four USN F-8 Crusader jet fighter bombers strafed the torpedo boats. One US aircraft was damaged, one 14.5 mm round hit the destroyer, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed and six were wounded; there were no U.S. casualties.[5]"